


Curiosity Killed the Cat

by ouch_thorns_spikey



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouch_thorns_spikey/pseuds/ouch_thorns_spikey
Summary: Morgan just wanted to find her lost cat(tagging as I go)





	1. Into the Studio

**Author's Note:**

> beta read by my friend, Sam! without him this entire story would be a train wreck

Morgan walked through the undergrowth towards the old studio. Her mother had told her she had to wait till morning to go looking for her cat, but she couldn’t wait. 

‘ _ What if he’s hurt?’  _ she had thought to herself before sneaking out.

The old animation studio seemed like a place Gata would like to hide, since it was both nearby and it was dark.. Gata, the cat, liked the dark- Morgan not so much. There was a certain type of dark she liked: a dark that she could still see in, but wasn’t so bright it hurt her eyes. But pitch black was too much, after all if she couldn’t see then who knows what could be hiding in the dark?

The animation studio had been abandoned a very long time ago, but it was still there for some reason. The large building was overgrown with plants, vines stretching up its yellowed walls.

Morgan finally made it to the door and she looked up at the sign over it. It read “Joey Drew Studios”. She slowly opened the door and stepped inside, the moment she stepped outside of the door frame, it snapped shut. The girl reached out to make sure she could open it to get out. She couldn’t. Morgan was trapped.

She took a deep, shaky breath and turned back to inside of the studio. Ink covered the walls and she then realized how hard it was going to be to find her cat in here. His black fur would blend in easily with the dark substance that covered the walls. Was he even here at all? She hoped so. It would be kind of sad to be trapped in the old studio when her cat wasn’t even in here.

The hallway opened up into a room, in one corner there was a projector that for some reason was still running. 

“But… how?” she wondered out loud. Since the studio had been abandoned, obviously there was no one to pay the electric bill so how was there still power?

Morgan looked around the room, there were cardboard cutouts of the cartoon character that was the face of the studio. She recognized this character as Bendy. Not because she had watched the cartoons but because she would see the occasional post online about the old cartoon character known as “Bendy the Dancing Demon”. Apparently the cartoon had been short lived but was still enjoyable. There were posters of the various different cartoons featuring characters other than Bendy. Boris the wolf looked a bit like a Goofy knock off, but he still looked like a cute character.

On one wall there was another sign that had the name of the studio on it. There was a hallway to her left, when she came to the end of the hallway there was a a desk there with a few drawings on it. When she inspected the drawings Morgan saw what she assumed was a former version of the Bendy design. It had a little note attached to it that simply said ‘NO’.

On the other side of the hallway it turned and there was another room. There were multiple other desks, these ones had light tables. While inspecting all the Bendy drawings she came across a desk without a light. At first she didn’t pay this table any mind, but then she went back to look at it again. Bendy had  _ changed.  _ Under normal circumstances she would be excited about this but with the studio being kinda creepy, she was a but weirded out by this. 

She then went back to the room with the sign. To the right of the sign there was another hallway.

“ _ This place is huge. _ ” she thought to herself.

There was a sign on the wall pointing to the art department(to the left), the ‘Ink Machine’, the theatre, and the break room(all to the right). She went to her left to check out the art department, but the door was locked. It seemed she could only go to her right.

The hallway to her right had a few doors but all of them were locked. At the end of the hallway there was a post(?) on the wall with the words “ink output schedule”. 

“ _ What does  _ that  _ mean? _ ” she asked herself.

She didn’t pay very much attention to that though. She finally made it to a room. It was kind of… beautiful? Stunning? A machine hung by chains was suspended over a dark pit. The light that shone through cracks in the walls made it seem almost… angelic. She took a step back from the balcony. Morgan assumed this was the ink machine. But why would an animation studio need so much? Sure, it must have taken a lot of ink to make animations but not  _ this  _ much.

The girl began to walk back down the hallway, but this time she noticed an open door. She walked in and went down the stairs that led to what she could only assume was the break room. A few tables and chairs were all around the room. A dart board was on the wall by a door, she would have played with it if she wasn’t so nervous. The door next to the dart board just had a lot “bacon soup” in it. She didn’t eat the bacon soup.

There was another entry way that led down  _ another  _ hallway(how big was this studio?). There was one doorway that was blocked off by wooden boards, Morgan took the hint and didn’t even try to get past them.

She turned around and headed back to the break room, up the stairs and into the hallway. She then froze. The creak of boards nearby revealed that she wasn’t as alone as she had thought. She walked slowly and quietly towards an area she hadn’t been in before, the hallway had two turns, to the right and the left. She remembered the sound coming from the right, so that’s where she went.

Before Morgan rounded another corner, she heard a crash that sounded like a board hitting the floor. She just stood there for a few seconds until she finally gathered enough courage to peak around the corner. There was nobody there, but a board had indeed fallen and she could hear footsteps echoing through the halls.

She turned back around  and took a deep breath, and then peaked around it again. A Bendy cutout had suddenly appeared there with no signs of who had put it there. It wasn’t facing her though. It was facing whoever else was in the studio.

She didn’t think the man had seen her but the moment she saw him she hid around the corner again. She didn’t get a good look at him, all she knew was that he was a man and that he had jumped at the sight of the cutout. 

“Who put this here?” Morgan heard the man ask himself.

She then heard his footsteps echoing back down another part of the hall. She took a peak around the corner just to it was safe to move now. She walk as carefully as possible and rounded the corner to see the back of the man, he was staring at something.

That something was what looked like an  _ actual real life _ Boris. His chest had been split open and a wrench was stuck inside.

“Oh my god. Joey, what were you doing?” the man asked.

Morgan took another step forward. The board creaked. The man slowly turned around, his eyes wide with fear, and then Morgan’s brown eyes locked with his blue eyes.


	2. The Prophet and His New Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gata meets a new friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta read by my friend Sam! his a03 is samisdumb. go check out his stuff, it's amazing!

 

Gata walked down the abandoned halls, his fur fluffed up in agitation and his yellow eyes narrowed. The cat knew he shouldn’t have ran away again, but it was terrible being cooped up in that house all day and night. He had to see the moon every once in a while, but he was an indoor cat. It made sense that he was an indoor cat, after all the outside world was a dangerous place for cats. But he wasn’t cat.

At least not a normal one anyway, he had been stuck in this feline form for many years. He sighed and sat down in a corner, his long tail curling around his small paws. Gata hoped Morgan hadn’t followed him in, after walking through the door he quickly learned leaving would be unlikely.

Him being trapped here wasn’t too bad, he had lived a long life. He was ready to die. Morgan, on the other hand, was only thirteen, and she had a long life ahead of her. Gata had lost count how many years he had lived. A few hundred at the very least. Such a long time had pasted in the blink of an eye. He had made so many mistakes that still needed to be fixed.

“ _ Maybe I’m not as prepared to die I thought I was… _ ” he thought to himself. He laid down, his head resting on his front paws. The worst part about this cursed form was how unbearably  _ small  _ he was. He was a little bigger than a kitten, so he got in fights with larger stray cats a lot. They thought he was weak. He wasn’t, despite being trapped in the form of a small cat he still had a lot more strength than any normal one.

He never killed the strays. They had such short lives already and he didn’t want to shorten them. But they would always ask what he was when he beat them. He never had an answer.

Gata remembered a lot of things about his life, but not what he really was. He knew he wasn’t always a cat, but that didn’t really narrow things out all that much. Perhaps he was a god? A demon? Maybe even and angel? He didn’t know.

All he knew was that he had made a lot of friends. But they always died. He had tried to not get close to people for a while, but he just couldn’t do that. So, when he was cursed to forever be a cat he got himself into shelters and him being so small, he always seemed to get adopted pretty quickly. Most owners were loving. Others were not. But he didn’t let that get him down. Morgan always seem special to him. She seemed to be the only one to notice his peculiarities and she always came looking for him. Most people would just give up after he escaped so many times. But she didn’t. 

A noise startled Gata out of his thoughts, he raised his head and perked his ears forward. He wasn’t sure what the sound was, it sounding like… footsteps? But… they sounded like the shoes the person wore were covered in ink, which was reasonable as it was splattered across the floors, and it, making squelching noises every time they took a step  He quickly hid in the shadows, waiting for whatever made the sound to pass by.

Finally, he saw the one who was making the noise. They seemed to be a human covered from head to toe in ink. They had the strangest mask on, it looked like the character that was all over the studio, but there was a hole were Gata assumed the person’s mouth was. They were carrying one of the cardboard cutouts of the demon character. The ink person set it against the wall.

Gata forgot about hiding and crept out of the shadows, his yellow eyes wide. The person finished setting up the cutout and turned around. The sight of them brought Gata back to reality and he made a mad dash back into the safety of the shadows, but it was already too late. They had seen him and began walking toward Gata.

The little black cat pressed himself into the corner as the ink creature came closer and closer to him. They picked him up and held him at eye level, despite the mask not having holes for the eyes.

The person seemed very confused, “What are you doing here?” he asked more himself than Gata. obviously Gata couldn’t respond but he did cock his head. That voice seemed… familiar. Then, he remembered the tapes. He had been listening to the various tapes, the ones he could manage to reach and turn on, and a few of them seemed to have the same voice as the inky person.

He had read the signs around the music department. The music director's name was Sammy Lawrence and Gata had assumed that the voice was his. Was this Sammy Lawrence? What happened to him? Gata decided to call this person Sammy, just to put a name to his new “friend”.

Sammy lowered him from eye level, but didn’t put him down. Then he started walking. Gata quickly accepted that Sammy wasn’t going to put him down anytime soon.

The ink covered man carried the little cat through the studio, soon making his way to a balcony with a projector on it. Sammy turned on the projector and quickly hurried towards somewhere else in the studio. Soon, they were in another room, this one was the same place the balcony looked over. Sammy played a few instruments in a certain order. 

Then, what Gata thought looked a bit like a garage door, began to open. Sammy walked into the room, still carrying Gata with him. The door closed behind him.

There was a very short hallway that opened up into a room. Inside there was, for some odd reason, a toilet, a desk with a banjo leaning against it, a single candle, a doll, a sheet of music on the floor, some sort of symbol on the floor, and pipes flowing through the walls. Then Gata looked at the wall above the desk. There were words written on the wall in ink.

_ Sing a happy song, _

_ Whistle a merry toon. _

_ Wait for his arrival, _

_ He’s coming very soon. _

 

“ _ Who’s coming very soon?” _ Gata thought to himself.

Sammy walked over to the desk and sat Gata down. The two just stared at each other for a while. Sammy slowly reached out gave the black cat a pat on the head. Gata was a bit annoyed because the ink stuck to his fur, but at the same time it was the first contact he had with another living being since entering the studio. 

Since the little cat didn’t react negatively to the pat, Sammy began to actually pet Gata. If Gata could, he would have smiled, he was pretty sure he was the first friendly creature this man had met in a long while. Sure, it was a bit uncomfortable for the ink to soak into his fur, but it was still nice to be given some affection after wandering around the old studio for such a long time.

Sammy stopped petting him and Gata felt a tugging on his neck. He suddenly remembered the collar he had on. There were two tags on the collar, one with his name on it and one with Morgan’s mother’s information on it in case he was found by somebody when he ran away. He lifted his chin to make it easier for Sammy to look at the tags. 

“Gata…” Sammy muttered to himself, “what a strange name for a cat.”

Sammy looked at him for a moment before saying, “Stay here.” He then turned around and left. Gata sat there for a while, waiting for him to come back. When Sammy came back he was carrying a can with the label saying “Bacon Soup”.

Gata had seen that stuff all over the place, he would have tried eating it before, but all of them were closed and he couldn’t open them. Sammy had opened this one and set it down in front of the little black cat. Gata sniffed and it and decided trying it wouldn’t hurt. At least he hoped not, he had no idea how old this stuff was after all. He stuck his head in the can and ate some. It was kind of chunky but at least it tasted like bacon.

While Gata was busy eating, Sammy had picked up his banjo. He sat down on the stool and began playing. Gata looked up from the soup, his ears flicking forward. Gata laid down on the desk, resting his chin on his front paws. He closed his eyes and, with the help of the soothing music, drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I drew a pic of Gata for those of you interested: https://ouch-thorns-are-spikey.tumblr.com/post/182850550696/if-youre-a-scrub-who-cant-read-cursive-or-maybe


	3. Turning on the Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan and Henry turn on the ink machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friend Sam helped me edit this, his account is samisdumb. go check out his stuff, its really good.

The two stared at each other, both of them  _ very  _ confused. Morgan took a step back, staying silent. 

Then, the man spoke, “What are  _ you _ doing here?”

“I-I’m looking for my cat. He ran away.” Morgan said hesitantly. She didn’t really trust this man. 

“Why would you look for a cat here of all places?”

Morgan shrugged, “I dunno, this place was nearby and he likes the dark.”

“Well... what’s your name?” The man asked her.

“Morgan Grey. Your’s?”

“Henry Stein ” he responded. “I’m here because an old friend of mine invited me back. I used to work here.”

“Really? What did you do?” 

“I was an animator.” Henry said, “And I also co-founded the company..”

Morgan raised her eyebrows, “Why’d you leave?”

“The job took up a lot of time, not to mention that Joey wasn’t the greatest friend to have.”

Morgan didn’t press any further since Henry was clearly uncomfortable on the topic. The two stood there in awkward silence for a while before Morgan spoke up, “So, what are we going to do now?”

“I was going to turn on the ink machine. It seems like the only thing to do.” Henry responded, shrugging.

“Alright, do you know how?” Morgan asked.

“My best bet is the items in that other room. They seem to have something to do with turning on the machine.”

“What items?” Morgan asked in bewilderment.

“Oh, you must not have seen that room. There’s another room with a bunch of silhouettes of different things.” Henry explained. He then led her to another room in the studio. It had six pedestals with the already mentioned silhouette pictures on the wall. There was also a lever at the end of the long room with some sort of screen(?) with the words ‘low pressure’ on it.

“Do you know where we can find these things?” Morgan asked.

“The wrench was in Boris’s chest and I think I saw the gear in the room with the ink machine,” Henry said.

“I think I might have seen a little pot of ink in that room with all the light tables.” Morgan offered.

The two gathered three out of the six items fairly quickly, but three things were still left. The book, the doll, and the record. They both wandered around the studio, looking for the objects.

While searching, they found a tape. According to Henry, it was the voice of Wally Franks, the janitor. He said something about the pipes bursting a lot so Morgan made a mental note to watch out for that.

When they finally found them (technically Henry found them, Morgan just tagged along) they made their way back to the room with the pedestals and placed the objects on their corresponding pedestal.

When they finished Morgan asked, “What now?”

“We need to find a way to get the ink flowing. Then we can turn on the main power.” Henry responded.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

They made their way down the hall and from around one corner a bendy cutout popped its head out, making both Morgan and Henry jump. They rounded that corner, but there was no one there. 

“ _ Strange... _ ” Morgan thought.

They walked into the room where they had found the bendy doll, Henry had said he saw something here that might help to turn the ink machine on. When they entered the room, the projector turned on without either of them touching it. A Bendy animation showed up on the screen, along with whistling. Henry paid no mind to it, so Morgan decided not to acknowledge it either.

The moment Henry turned the valve a pipe in the room burst causing both of them to panic. They immediately got out of that room. They walked quickly walked back to the pedestal room, Morgan shooting a quick, fearful glance at Boris before entering the room. Henry pulled the lever and everything went dark. A light shone on where the lever was. Henry didn’t say anything, he just walked out of the room and made his way towards the room with the ink machine in it. Morgan followed after him, struggling to keep up. 

The door was boarded up, which was strange since it hadn’t been like that when Morgan last saw it. She and Henry peered through the gaps in the boards, then, suddenly, everything in that room went pitch black. The studio was already darker after Henry had turned on the machine but this was much,  _ much  _ darker.

She heard something from inside the room and her fight or flight instinct kicked in, she and Henry fled, hearing something wading through the ink behind them. Then, Morgan realized where Henry was going, the exit was in sight and she called out to him.

“Henry, wait! The door is lo-” She stopped when the ground gave out from under him and she saw the man fall through the floor, straight to whatever was below. She glanced behind her and quickly decided that jumping through the hole in the ground was a better fate than letting whatever was chasing her catch her.

It was getting closer, so Morgan had to make a quick decision, she jumped into the hole and fell until she felt herself come to a stop. The ink below her had cushioned her fall, but it still hurt to fall like that.

She saw Henry turning a valve nearby when he did all the ink in the room was drained.

“Henry!” She cried in relief. Apparently, he hadn’t noticed she had fallen too becausetoo  because he looked surprised to see her when he turned around.

“Morgan! I’m glad you’re alright.” He too looked relieved.

“Thanks. I’m happy you’re ok too.” She glanced around the room and noticed another audio tape on a shelf. She walked over and pressed the play button.

“Thomas Connor,” Henry said. “He was a mechanic. From what I remember before I left he worked on the ink machine.”

“It sounds like that’s what he did.” Morgan said, looking at the tape again before turning back to Henry, “What now?”

Henry shrugged, “I guess we just keep on going.”

They began walking down the stairs and came to another room filled with ink. There was a valve on the wall that Henry turned and ink in the room below quickly drained. They did this one more time before coming to another room. This room had a desk in it with an ax for some odd reason.

While Henry was grabbing the ax, Morgan was busy staring at the wall in confusion. There were words written there.

 

THE CREATOR LIED TO US

 

“This will definitely come in handy,” Henry said, causing Morgan to turn to him and indicate towards the words on the wall. He just shrugged and moved on.

Henry chopped down the boards blocking the door and the two walked down the hallway. They found another door with boards blocking it off. Henry quickly chopped them down and when they were about to step into the room when they both heard something from behind them. They turned around and the hallway behind them had caved in.

“There's no going back now,” Morgan said before turning back and stepping into the room. Henry followed. There were two coffins and a pentagram with lit candles around it on the floor.

They both stepped into the pentagram at the same time, Morgan began seeing pictures. Most of them of a winged creature with bright yellow eyes and dark fur. In the first few it looked young, but it got older as she saw more images. Then the last one she saw was an image of her cat, Gaga. His wide yellow eyes seeming to stare right into her soul. Then, everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a drawing for this fic for those of you interested: https://ouch-thorns-are-spikey.tumblr.com/post/182878495716/i-hope-yall-are-happy-with-this-cause-my-hand

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic so take it easy on me ;w;  
> if you see any mistakes, feel free to point them out to me! even though English is my first language i still suck at it.  
> socials:  
> tumblr: @ouch-thorns-are-spikey  
> deviantart: @thornsarespikey  
> twitter: @thornsartspikey


End file.
